Movie Review: ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’

Director: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson

Cast: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren, Jake Johnson, Jason Schwartzman, Issa Rae, Karan Soni, Daniel Kaluuya, Oscar Isaac, Greta Lee, Andy Samberg, Amandla Stenberg

Plot: Gwen Stacy aka Spider-Woman encounters an alternative Vulture who has travelled through a hole left in the multiverse. This leads to her being recruited by the Spider Society, an elite team of Spider-Heroes dealing with the fall-out of the previous movie. Gwen takes this opportunity to return to Miles’ universe where he’s all to keen to join the team.

Review: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse landed in 2018 and completely blew us away. It was a remarkable technical achievement in animation, which would have been enough to impress us, but it gave us a fresh take on the Spider-Man mythos that many people feel was more successful than any of the live-action adaptation. We gave it a very firm 10/10 score and have been waiting patiently for a sequel. We are not disappointed. Rather than a rehash of the original, or becoming reliant on gimmicks and cameos, this is an insane escalation of what the original set-up. There is so much going on here that it makes Spider-Man: No Way Home feel like a warm-up for the main event.

We open with Spider-Woman (Steinfeld) recounting the story and setting the scene. Gwen’s water-colour universe is just as impressive looking as Mile’s (Moore) newsprint world, and is just the first of many different art and animation styles that we’re going to get to enjoy here. Even during slow moments in the story there’s such remarkable detail and texture that you want to stop to appreciate it all. Anyway, Gwen is taking on the Vulture, but discovers that this isn’t her Vulture but one from a da Vinci universe, appearing like a sketch on parchment. It all comes to a head with the appearance of Spider-Man 2099 Miguel O’Hara (Isaacs) and a pregnant and motorbike riding Spider-Woman Jessica Drew (Rae). Following the battle, Gwen is recruited to the inter-dimensional Spider Society who work to repair the cross-universe damage caused by the first movie.

Back on Earth-1610, Miles is working to balance superheroing with family and school life. After a complicated fight with new villain The Spot (Schwartzman), Gwen reappears through a portal and tells Miles about the Spider Society whilst refusing to give him the chance to be involved. This isn’t enough to deter Miles and he follows Gwen back through her portal where he meets Pavitr Prabhakar, Spider-Man of Mumbattan (Soni) and Hobie Brown, the Spider-Punk (Kaluuya) along with hundreds upon hundreds of other Spiders.

We’re not going to get any more into the story as we’d be getting into serious spoiler territory. There’s so many surprise appearances, weird dimensions and fantastic character appearances we couldn’t spoil them all if we tried…so we won’t. This is a brilliant escalation of the concept though, and not just because they jammed in as many references to obscure versions of Spider-Man as possible. It’s because they build the story off the concept of what makes a ‘Spider-Man story’ distinctly Spider-Man. We saw Miles embrace his role as a Spider-Man, and now he has to break the very idea of what make a Spider-Man.

As mentioned above, the mix of animation styles on display is fascinating all on its own. The da Vinci style Vulture was just a taste – albeit one we want an entire buffet of – with Spider-Punk being the wildest. It’s little wonder that he barely featured in the trailers as he must have taken hours to render. He’s made up of the torn newsprint style popularised by the 1970s British punk movement with the colours, textures and design shifting in full anarchy style. It says something about how our ability to process visual information that we can make any sense of this movie at all. Background details shift in and out of focus and the colours seperate, watercolours blend and mix together, and some key characters appear as unfinished sketches and frameworks. It’s an absolute trip.

Much like the first movie, this is something we’re going to be gushing about for weeks to come. We cannot wait for a 4K home release so we can pick through some of it frame by frame and really appreciate the artistry and creativity. In particular, we want to see THAT ONE cameo that left our jaws on the sticky cinema floor.

Rating: TEN out of TEN